Pages

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Bobo has written another AWFUL BOOK. Huzzah! Huzzah! Now before you think I am condemning this long awaited follow-up prequel/sequel to her memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, you should know that this is in fact how her family refers to her fantastic first book. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is a worthy successor to her first critically acclaimed memoir. Knowing I had this book coming up on my list for review, I hurried to read Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight about Fuller's African childhood because I am completely and totally compulsive about reading things in order (and I had owned the first book, unread, for well over a decade). Less obsessed readers do not need to do so though as this tale, centered around Fuller's dramatic and entertaining mother Nicola Fuller, easily stands on its own.

Nicola Fuller grew up in Kenya while Britain was still ascendant on the African continent and her attitudes were shaped by life under a ruling minority. She is a fascinating, expansive, extravagant, over the top personality who shines as the emotional center of this book. With insight from her mother and extensive, casual interviews over cocktails under African sunsets, Fuller tells of her mother's childhood, young adulthood, charmed early life with Fuller's father, and the increasingly dangerous times and tragedies they survived. While this sequel does cover some of the same ground as her first memoir, it adds a whole new dimension to both Tim and Nicola Fuller, painting them more sympathetically than they were previously portrayed. And given the love that shines out from the pages of this book, this portrayal is probably the more accurate.

Woven throughout the tales of her mother's life, are events of great historical significance. These forays into modern African history never come off as dry but instead as shaping the everyday life and tragedies of everyone around them, not excluding the Fullers themselves. Fuller does not whitewash the colonial sympathizing sentiment with which she grew up. She details the atrocities of a war that touched many people she knew and that constrained her own childhood. The acknowledgement that the African continent and the countries on it are complicated is a constant subtext. Nicola Fuller is also complicated, full of contradictions, and enduring just like the land she so loves.

This memoir/biography is really a love story on many levels: the Fullers' love for Africa, Bobo's love for her mother, and Nicola's and Tim's steady love for each other. It is enchanting and funny, heartbreaking and nostalgic, a tale acknowledging and mourning the past but content to move into the future complete with cocktails served under the tree of forgetfulness (an actual tree on the banana and fish farm where Nicola and Tim live now). A lushly gorgeous rendering of a specific time and place, this was a charming, intimate, and delightful read.

For more information about Alexandra Fuller and the book visit her webpage.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Amazon says this about the book: What if saying hello to an old friend meant saying good-bye to life as you know it?

It’s been six years since Pen Calloway watched her best friends walk out of her life. And through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the vicissitudes of single motherhood, she has never stopped missing them.

Pen, Cat, and Will met on their first day of college and formed what seemed like a magical and lifelong bond, only to see their friendship break apart amid the realities of adulthood. When, after years of silence, Cat—the bewitching, charismatic center of their group—e-mails Pen and Will with an urgent request to meet at their college reunion, they can’t refuse. But instead of a happy reconciliation, what awaits is a collision of past and present that sends Pen and Will, with Pen’s five-year-old daughter and Cat’s hostile husband in tow, on a journey across the world.

With her trademark wit, vivid prose, and gift for creating authentic, captivating characters, Marisa de los Santos returns with an emotionally resonant novel about our deepest human connections. As Pen and Will struggle to uncover the truth about Cat, they find more than they bargained for: startling truths about who they were before and who they are now. They must confront the reasons their friendship fell apart and discover how—and if—it can ever fall back together.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

and one that occurred afterwards because I am a little slow on the uptake.

In the order that the thoughts occurred to me, which is to say, no particular order at all, let me share with you some of the contents of my head during this morning's run.

1. I can't believe I gave up extra sleep time for this! (Either I'm coming down with something or hell has frozen over because I looked at my bed this morning after coming back from kid #3's bus stop and actually chose to go for a run instead of crawling back under the covers.)

2. Huh. I'm not sure these lyrics are the best thing to be hearing mid-run. (The iPod was on shuffle so I'm not sure of the song but the lyrics were something along the lines of "I want to be running when the sand runs out." Yeah, not feeling so metaphorical at that particular moment.)

3. Holy cow buddy! Please don't ever drag your trash to the curb shirtless again. Unless you are in phenomenal shape and a hottie to boot, save even the partial nudity for the privacy of your own house. (And shortly following that, directed to the same guy came another thought.) Just because the jeans are your skinny jeans, does not make them, in fact, *actual* skinny jeans. I have jeans that fit 20 years and 30 pounds ago too but I keep them as a goal, not a current fashion statement. And as far as that goes, skinny jeans on men is not a pretty fashion anyway so best to just avoid the whole look. (Yes, it took me a while to run past this guy's house. I think it was the running equivalent of slowing down in the car to rubberneck. Unfortunately it probably reinforced the guy's image of himself as able to pull off the too small jeans hiding under the tubby gut--and yes I am well aware of the pot calling the kettle black circumstances of that observation but at least my tubby gut was covered and trying to exercise.)

4. What does that guy have in his hand? A golf club? Shit! Maybe I shouldn't run past him. (It's a little disconcerting to be faced with passing a walking man carrying a golf club when you are clearly a chubby, slow, out of shape woman. On the plus side, he was a painfully slow walker if I was sailing past him like I had wings on feet because Apollo I'm not.)

5. Seriously, if you wanted to ban feathers in girls' hair, shouldn't that have been included in the dress code before the school year began and I spent money getting one put in R.'s hair? Not knowing that it would be the fashion is no excuse for you, as principal of a middle school, to declare after the fact that feathers are not okay. It's been a fashion making its way around the country for months now as you would know if you paid any attention whatsoever. (Fly fishermen the country over have been lamenting the rising cost of feathers for their flies as a result of the trend and even I, in my self-imposed news vaccuum--gearing up to avoid all election BS, dontcha know, know that and I'm not paid to deal with 6th-7th-8th graders all day every day. Seriously, how out of touch is the school administration?)

6. Only a few more small hills and then I'm home. Wonder if crawling up them still counts as running? (Self-explanatory, no?)

And the shower thought...

7. Mother effer! (Sweat washing into the paper cut like snicks all across my legs where I had a run in with ornamental grass planted too close to the sidewalk on my walk last night hurts like a son of a beeyotch. And furthermore, lotion after a shower is an even worse idea. Just sayin'. And you're welcome for keeping it close to PG rated since you know there was absolutely zero censoring in my actual thoughts. Hey, it's my own private shower after all. We also won't discuss the fantasy I had about creeping out late at night and taking a weed whacker to the whole damn mound of grass. A girl can dream though.)

I have been reading romances since I was 10 or 12 years old. I fell in love with Jane Austen the first time I opened the pages of Pride and Prejudice. And yet, it wasn’t until recently that I opened, read, and enjoyed my first Georgette Heyer novel, despite the fact that Heyer is widely considered a worthy successor to Austen. But after my first Heyer, I was glad to know I hadn’t yet read much of her works because it meant that I still had that much enjoyment ahead of me. False Colours is the third work I’ve read and although it didn’t entertain me as much as my previous two novels did, it still had the authenticity, attention to detail, and that indefinable something that characterizes Heyer’s works.

Borrowing a successful plot contrivance from great writers before her, False Colours has a masquerade or false identity plot. Kit and Evelyn are twins and as close to physically identical as can be. So when Evelyn is missing on the very eve of a party to introduce him to the family of the woman he hopes to marry, Kit reluctantly gives in to his flighty and charmingly capricious mother’s insistence that he impersonate his elder brother, the Earl of Denville. After all, the masquerade is only to last one evening and only for the purpose of convincing Cressy’s intimidating and opinionated grandmother to give her blessing to their marriage. But Evelyn doesn’t return the following day and despite Kit’s best efforts to remain out of Cressy and her grandmother’s way so that they don’t discover the hoax pulled over on them, his mother agrees to host them at a small house party on Evelyn’s country estate. Kit and Cressy are thrown together with great regularity and start building a happy rapport. Yet Kit cannot tell her his real identity and so things bumble along in an almost Shakespearean comedy sort of way towards the denouement.

While the depiction of the times and social mores is as perfect as ever, the language, even for a reader familiar with much Regency-set fiction, is rife with unfamiliar slang and coloquiallisms. This might not be as large a problem as it is except that the bulk of the book is dialogue between Kit and Lady Denville, robbing the reader of many context clues. Lady Denville, Kit’s mother, as a character, is absurd and cheerily profligate, even in the face of ruin. She is depicted as a doting mother and yet she is unconcerned that her debts, the ones she is doing her utmost to ignore or forget, are going to force her eldest son into a loveless marriage of convenience so that he can end the trust in which his fortune is held. And she is unbothered by the tenuous, rather dicey situation in which she’s placed Kit, the potential heartbreak which it will cause both Kit and Cressy. It’s an inconsistency of character that Heyer doesn’t generally make. The plot is rather more drawn out than it needs to be and it is lacking in the tension that would keep the reader eagerly turning the pages given that both Kit and Lady Denville are spectacularly unconcerned by Evelyn’s prolonged and continued absence. There are moments of humor here but the weakness of the story otherwise overshadows them. This is not a bad book, it just isn’t everything Heyer is capable of and readers unfamiliar with her oeuvre might want to start elsewhere, perhaps with the enchanting caper that is The Grand Sophy (my own personal favorite so far).

Monday, August 29, 2011

Normally short stories are not high on my list of appealing things to read. A few authors have managed to break through my apathy for the form though and after reading this collection of linked short stories, I'm going to add Siobhan Fallon to the list. When we see news coverage of our troops, it generally focuses on the far away places in which they are fighting, the emotional toll it takes on the men and women in uniform, or on the tragedy of their loss. Rarely do we see even a human interest story on the lives of the people they've left behind, the husbands, wives, and children who wait patiently for them on military bases around the country. Fallon's stories offer glimpses into the lives of the families who live a military life even when the men (and women) are gone.

I picked this up one night and absolutely zipped through it. Beautiful and affecting, these tales of life on base after the soldiers are deployed and how they integrate back into their lives and those of their families after such extended absences are timely and well-written. The uniqueness of the army base setting and the challenges faced by our military and their families make this an unusual but important read. Tackling subjects as diverse as infidelity, loss of trust, loneliness, the ever present threat of death or disability, and the petty everyday minutia that takes on a greater significance in light of the dangers facing the husbands in these stories, the collection is unvarnished and honest.

Fallon's prose in unadorned and straightforward and the stories are sometimes stark and unforgiving. The lives of the wives are threaded through with tension and anticipation, sometimes pleasant and other times terrifying. Some of the stories are a little ragged and unfinished but that reflects reality of life on base. There are no real endings, not even when a wife hears the worst, that her husband has died, just the relentless march of life moving onward. A moving look at the enormous range of sacrifices made by our military and their loved ones, this collection is well worth savoring.

Hmph! School supply shopping, the start of school itself, and the resumption of all kid activities has obviously taken a whack at my reading and reviewing as evidenced below. Here's hoping this coming week I'll be able to find a better balance again. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed these past several weeks are:

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
The Silver Boat by Luanne Rice
Twelve by Twelve by William Powers
Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum
The Wedding Cake War by Lynna Banning
Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom
Someone Will Be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan
The Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellyn Bache
When the Killing's Done by T.C. Boyle
The First Husband by Laura Dave
Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt
Next by James Hynes
Spanish Holiday by Kate Cann
The Little Woman Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas
Baby Don't Go by Susan Andersen
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
Unsaid by Neil Abramson
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy
Harvest by Catherine Landis
The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji
The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber
Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley
The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories by Steve Almond
Withering Tights by Louise Rennison
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson

I thought for sure I wasn't going to have any more surprises in the mailbox but I was wrong! (Don't tell my kids I was wrong though; I have them convinced that I'm always right. Of course, it helps that they have yet to figure out the proper use of the words right and correct so I'm not really lying.) This past week's mailbox arrival:

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Life in the Thumb as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

When I found an e-mail in my in-box asking me if I would be interested in reviewing this book, my first instinct was to say no. I mean, I like to bury my head in the sand whenever possible so reading a book about one woman's experience hearing the diagnosis of breast cancer and then undergoing treatment went against every molecule of my being. So I did what every self-respecting fan of denial does, I was wishy-washy in my response, punting the decision whether she wanted to send me the book back onto the author. Decisive, that's me. But Ms. Fox didn't give up and the book landed in my mailbox. I placed it on a shelf and eyed it warily for rather a long time. I've finally read it and while I am still hopeful that I can ignore the statistics about breast cancer and women, I am starting to be touched by these terrible numbers in ways I would never wish. First, a friend of mine was recently diagnosed. And now I've found a small lump in my own breast so I suspect I'm headed to my first mammogram (which was coming like a freight train anyway as I'm closing in on a rather significant numbered birthday). Much too close for comfort. And while I imagine that things are fine (I come from lumpy-breasted women who also worry terribly so this won't be posted until after I have more info to allay their fears), it certainly makes the sand my head is currently buried in a lot more translucent than I would like.

Subtitled What I Learned and You Need to Know About Stage Zero Breast Cancer, this memoir tells of Fox's experience from diagnosis through treatment. It also has a final chapter made up of questions and answers from Fox's own team of doctors. Stage zero cancer is DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) and while it is the most curable form of breast cancer, it is still cancer and diagnosis with this carries with it all the emotional freight of cancer in other stages. Jackie Fox was not entirely surprised to get the diagnosis but she certainly wasn't ready for it either. And she wasn't ready for the roller coaster ride that she would shortly take both emotionally and physically as a result. This book is the result of her ride and her desire to share her experience with other women. It is, of course, intensely personal and uniquely her own but it has advice and wisdoms universal enough to share.

The short chapters in this book definitely recall the newspaper essays that were the original form of this "mammoir" as they are fairly self-contained. The writing is conversational and Fox directly addresses her readers on many occasions. She offers her experience and her suggestions, making this a sort of hybrid memoir/self-help combination. I personally would have prefered straight memoir and think it would find a bigger audience as such but Fox's stated objective in writing this was not straight memoir and so any perceived failing is on my part. Who knows? Perhaps after my doctor's appointment this week I'll be very grateful for the advisory parts of the book. I sure hope not though! (Edited to add that I wrote this months ago and I can happily keep my head in the sand for a while longer.)

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The late 1940's and 1950's evoke proper housewifely images like Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver, vaccuuming in heels and pearls. Although this was a Hollywood constructed image, achieving a near likeness to it was certainly the plan of the day. And doing so did not come easy. Quite a few colleges across the US offered young women home economics courses to teach them to be good wives and mothers through hands-on experience. The invented midwestern Wilton College in Grunwald's novel is one of those. Main character Henry House, borrowed from a local orphanage, was a "practice baby," intended to be lent to the program for two years of raising by a group of young, enthusiastic women learning to be mothers.

Martha Gaines, the house matron, ran a tight ship and subscribed to the very strict methods of child rearing about to be eclipsed by Dr. Sears' more gentle and loving approach. But Henry, at 6 weeks old, comes to a practice house at a time when babies are still tightly scheduled and cared for but not lavished with love. There is, as the title suggests, something irrestible about this baby and even the bitter, widowed matron comes to love Henry, craving his love in return, eventually lobbying to be allowed to keep Henry and raise him in the practice house as her own son.

As sought after as Henry is (and will continue to be for his entire life), he is emotionally stunted, marked by an inability to make connections with others, and incapable of not only fulfilling the needs of others but also of even wanting another person until or unless she is emotionally inaccessible to him. Being raised by so many mothers who must, of necessity, graduate and move on in their own lives, taught Henry that everything in life is transitory, fleeting. The desperate love of his "mother," matron Martha Gaines, comes too late and too threaded through with untruths about his beginnings for its depth and permanence to have an impact on Henry's emotional life. Being a "practice baby" completely defined Henry.

As he moves from childhood to adulthood, his search to belong somewhere continues through his efforts with his birth mother, his work as an animator at Disney, his move to 1960's London to be a part of The Beatles' The Yellow Submarine, and his eventual homecoming to the States. As he moves through each of these times in his life, he continually reenacts the heady infatuation, easy conquest, and abandonment of his infancy and early childhood. But instead of being the object of this, he inflicts this destructive cycle on the women in his life. And yet, he remains a sympathetic character, if not quite the irresistible one of the title.

The times and places of Henry's life are rendered in vivid and accurate detail. The secondary characters who swirl around him are fully realized, or as fully realized as they ever are to Henry, and human. If some of the plot threads are unfinished and abandonned, it is because that is how Henry, in his emotionally stunted development, leaves them. The story reinforces the idea that early childhood is vital in character formation, acknowledges that nature and nurture both play important roles, and highlights the damage that can be done, even inadvertantly, without love. With a unique and fascinating premise, I thoroughly enjoyed this well written novel.

Amazon says this about the book: Lisa Patton won the hearts of readers last year, her book Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter became a sleeper-success. Building on a smashing debut, Lisa’s poised to go to the next level—because whether in Vermont snow or in Memphis heat, Dixie heroine Leelee Satterfield is never too far from misadventure, calamity...and ultimately, love.

Having watched her life turn into a nor’easter, 34-year-old Leelee Satterfield is back home in the South, ready to pick back up where she left off. But that’s a task easier said then done…Leelee’s a single mom, still dreaming of the Vermonter who stole her heart, and accompanied by her three best friends who pepper her with advice, nudging and peach daiquiris, Leelee opens another restaurant and learns she has to prove herself yet again. Filled with heart and humor, women’s fiction fans will delight in this novel.

Monday, August 22, 2011

In her late twenties, Kristine Gasbarre has had her fair share of unsuccessful relationships, dating all the wrong men. She decides to spend a year living and nannying in Italy, finding out something about her beloved grandfather's roots there. But then her grandfather dies and Krissy knows that she needs to go home, be with family, and comfort her widowed grandmother. So when her year in Italy is up, she flies home and chooses to move back to her small hometown, moving in with her parents. Wanting to help take on the care of her grandmother, Krissy realizes that her grandmother, happily, contentedly married for almost 60 years, would be the perfect person to help Krissy understand why she herself has not found the lasting love she so craves, to help her understand where all of her former relationships had gone wrong.

Gasbarre's evolving relationship with her grandmother is a satisfying and touching piece of her story. The tightening bond between the young woman and the grandmother who can teach her so much, especially about love, is inspiring. And Krissy's gentle attention to her grandmother benefitted both women so much. For a woman used to being needed, to be widowed and to have no one depending on her after almost 60 years of marriage must be unmooring, especially coupled with early stages of dementia. After a veritable lifetime of a perfect marriage, her grandmother had a store of wisdom that no one else in the family had tapped, so Krissy's desire to understand what had made her grandparents' marriage work happily for so long gave her grandmother a focus and a reason. An incredible love shines between Gasbarre and her grandmother throughout the book, when Krissy was asking for advice, when she was offering solace or alleviating her grandmother's loneliness, and even just when she chose to put her own plans on a back burner to take her grandmother to the doctor or to run errands.

It was this sense of caring for another person, coupled with a healthy respect for self, that Gasbarre's grandmother was trying to teach Krissy was a vital ingredient in any relationship. But Krissy was still learning and another relationship played out under her grandmother's eyes failed. A second love interest, endorsed by her grandmother, holds much more promise. I only hope that Gasbarre's grandmother was correct about Dr. Christopher, the major player in Gasbarre's dating life, and his potential to be "the one" because he comes off, in this memoir, as completely and totally unappealing. Emotionally unavailable and selfish, he is so dedicated to his work (and it is good work indeed) that he cheerfully goes completely radio silent for months, gives with one hand while taking away with the other, and stands Krissy up without showing a single shred of remorse. I just can't find what makes him such an appealing potential partner or believe that tolerating this uncaring behaviour is what her grandmother means when she says that Gasbarre must support her partner in his goals, accept him, and be completely in tune with his feelings and wants. What I saw on the page was just about 100% abnegation of her own wants and needs to a man who feels, at least as he is portrayed here, reluctant at best and unworthy at worst.

I found myself extremely frustrated by all of Gasbarre's dating relationships (including with Dr. Christopher) not because she was going about them incorrectly and not because she was asking her grandmother for advice, but more because she felt so needy in them and because she was so desirous of having what her grandparents had that she was willing to stay in each relationship long past the time that she should have, desperately trying to make them work by subsuming her own worth. Her familial relationships were much more appealing and evenly balanced than any of the relationships she had with men. And her relationship with her grandmother, where they became two equals, even while her grandmother gave her advice, was most satisfying and touching of all. Overall, this slowly moving, introspective memoir was fairly evenly balanced between evoking interest and annoyance in me.

In the midst of trying to get everyone ready for school to start next week, I am still getting some reading and reviewing done. It's probably all that keeps me sane throughout the process!!! Plus, there's a sense of accomplishment at chipping away at the *very* long list of books to review that I have accumulated. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed these past several weeks are:

Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley
How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre
The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories by Steve Almond
The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald
Withering Tights by Louise Rennison

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
The Silver Boat by Luanne Rice
Twelve by Twelve by William Powers
Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum
The Wedding Cake War by Lynna Banning
Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom
Someone Will Be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan
The Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellyn Bache
When the Killing's Done by T.C. Boyle
The First Husband by Laura Dave
Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt
Next by James Hynes
Spanish Holiday by Kate Cann
The Little Woman Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas
Baby Don't Go by Susan Andersen
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
Unsaid by Neil Abramson
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy
Harvest by Catherine Landis
The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji
The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber
Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley
How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre
The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories by Steve Almond
The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald
Withering Tights by Louise Rennison

Having been gone for so long, I didn't expect anything to land in my mailbox this week, especially since I have only just begun to dig myself out from under the avalanche of e-mail that accumulated while I was gone and haven't yet responded to a single review request! But somehow two books still found their way into my mailbox. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber came from Thomas Nelson.
Set in Oxford, this is a year long memoir about a woman finding religion in a very unlikely place: graduate school.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Life in the Thumb as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

We're finally back from our annual summer holidays and while there are the usual crazy bits to report, that's another e-mail entirely. This year I didn't post about my ditherings over which books to take with me on vacation. I forestalled such problems by taking just about everything I could (and far more than I'd ever read in the allotted time period). And I didn't ask for advice on which books to impose on my ever good-natured book club members for the months of June, July, and August. This year's selections (The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore, Harvest by Catherine Landis, and Kartography by Kamila Shamsie) were mostly well received and I'll get to continue on as Supreme High Dictator and Life-long Book Chooser so that's good. No, instead, I traipsed off northward without soliciting a single bit of reading advice and then spent my weeks away wallowing happily in the books I had around me. But me being me, I couldn't exactly be entirely satisfied with only the 50 or so books with which I had weighted down the back end of the car. I had to make a few scouting expeditions to those rooms of unscoured (by me), unmined potential: local bookstores. And by scouting, I mean going with wallet in hand to support the local economy of this place I love so much and only see once a year. Luckily I also have my book loving kids to help me give the stores the biggest possible financial boost I can.

Safe Harbor Books (which does not look all cozily snow covered like this in the summer) is the little bookstore on the main drag in Cedarville, the town closest to our cottage. I used to spend hours in there talking to my friend K. who ran it but now that she's moved, I don't get in there nearly enough. This year though, my children plowed through and decimated their stock in years gone by's grand tradition. All three kids collected an entire series of books (the Warriors series, The Clique series, and Steve Hamilton's series) to cart back to the cottage and looking at their prodigious stacks, I was fairly restrained, picking up only The English Major by Jim Harrison and The Year of the Boat by Lawrence Cheek. I did feel we needed to leave while there were still books there for other people!

The Village Idiom is the local used bookstore in the next town over and I love the owners. Sadly they are planning on closing up shop so I won't be able to pop in and natter with them on the spur of the moment anymore. R. chose a book while she was there that I figured she wasn't really going to like but never one to say no to a book (unless it is about a licensed tv or movie character), I let her get it and will just add it to my own stacks now that I've turned out to be correct (not that there was ever any doubt). T. bought a few while there too.

And finally, on a day when we had to kill some time in Sault Ste. Marie, I stumbled upon Up North Books and did a fair bit of damage in a short amount of time. The fun thing about a used bookstore this close to the Canadian border is that it has the potential to carry books not generally available in the States. And I found some of these forbidden gems in the brief amount of time I pottered around the store. I collected Not That Kind of Girl by Catherine Alliott, The Secret of Us by Roxanne Henke, Janice Gentle Gets Sexy by Mavis Cheek, Wedding Season by Katie Fforde, Constance by Rosie Thomas, and Mackinac Rhapsody by S. B. Meier.

And no, I did not read a single one of these new purchases this summer, sticking solely to the books I had carted with me. But I fully intend to visit these bookstores again next summer (well, not The Village Idiom unless E. and G. decide to keep it open) and add a few more in. After all, I didn't get to the bookstore on Mackinac Island this year nor did I make it to Petoskey, which has a great bookstore I haven't visited in over a decade. New (and old) bookstores are not my very favorite thing about vacation but they sure are on the list!

No matter what the news pundits and financial experts say, the state of the economy is best understood from the inside, from a personal perspective. How is your individual family weathering the economic mess? How are your friends? How are the businesses in your community doing? Do you too have to cut up your beloved Borders discount card because it is no longer viable? Caitlin Shetterly set out to personalize the financial crisis facing so many people, sharing her own family's slow, painful descent into debt and the lifestyle change and lessons learned as a result.

Shetterly and her husband were young and newly married when they packed up all of their belongings and their pets and headed to the west coast to follow their dreams and escape life already teetering on the edge of financial struggle in Maine. But one year out in California and the reality of the dream is inescapable and unfortunately untenable. And so the couple, beyond broke, having unexpectedly welcomed a baby into their family and lost a beloved pet, starts off on the long road home to the only safety net they know, to move in with Caitlin's mother. Having already chronicled their journey and the revelations that it inspires for NPR's Weekend Edition, Shetterly expands on that experience here in her book.

In some ways it feels unkind to say that I didn't much like Shetterly since she is not a fictional character in a book but instead a real flesh and blood person. But she has chosen a particular way to represent herself here in this memoir and I found it hard to like this representation. The story is repetitive and Shetterly seems unduly whiny, especially for someone who has quite a few more resources than the average joe who really is losing his or her shirt in this recession. Her losses, and they are many and potentially crushing, do grant her some perspective on our culture of excess and the need for connection among family and community but rather than count the blessings that she can still see, she bemoans everything that the country has done and is doing wrong and that led to her small family's failure. I found myself irritated more than moved by Shetterly's narrative. Perhaps the lack of personal accountability on the pages fueled my reaction more than the story itself. According to reviews elsewhere, most people disagree with me and find this moving and heartfelt. I had more of a visceral reaction to the scene in 1997's movie My Fellow Americans with the former presidents and the homeless family who had invited them into their station wagon. Obviously this was just not the book for me.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Something changes in kids during the final year of high school before they go off to college or take a gap year, marking the start of their adult lives. Perhaps these (unintentional) changes are a way of making the break that they must make an easier one. I know that my mom was not ready to have me leave for college until she endured my senior year in high school, certain that I had morphed into a terror. (And let me note for the record that I was overall a very good and easy kid compared to many.) I do not look forward to my own children, who grow ever closer to this age, doing the same shutting-out and shutting-down that I did and that is so stereotypical of 17-18 year old kids. Yet I happily chose to read a book about just this situation. Perhaps you could call it being forewarned and forearmed. Or maybe it will be, as the main character explains at one point, my "at least," as in "at least my kid isn't like that."

Cam Lightsey is a single mom who works as a lactation consultant. She has been raising daughter Aubrey alone since her ex, Martin, an attorney, left her to join a Scientology-like cult called Next! where he protects high profile Hollywood Nextarians. Aubrey was only two when Martin left and has no memories of him but she's now having conversations with him on Facebook behind her mother's back. While Cam ignores Aubrey's growing apathy to college, Aubrey is making her own plans for her future, ones that include her boyfriend, the high school football star, Tyler Moldenhauer. The disconnect between this mother and daughter, who were once so close, silently grows.

Narrated by both Cam and by Aubrey, the timelines of their narration are completely different. Cam tells of the present, the summer after Aubrey's graduation, as alone, she buys all of the things that she imagines Aubrey will need once she boards that plane for college. Aubrey, meanwhile narrates the fall prior to this post-high school summer, when she gives up band and falls for Tyler, and in the process drastically changes who she's always been. In each of their narratives, it is possible to see all the places that things have gone wrong between mother and daughter.

Cam wonders if Aubrey's life would have taken the path that she, Cam, wanted had Martin been present in their lives or if they had not moved to the suburbs to send Aubrey to better schools or even if she had just insisted that Aubrey see a doctor after suffering heat exhuastion at band boot camp. Bird has done a fanastic job of capturing the insecurities of a mother second-guessing herself, only wanting her daughter to succeed and to have the life that Cam has sacrificed so much to provide. That Aubrey wants a different life is what Cam is having such a difficult time seeing and accepting with grace.

Aubrey, who was once so open with her mother, retreated, withheld, and turned sullen her final year in school seemingly inexplicably and so Cam blames this transformation on boyfriend Tyler. In fact, Aubrey's narration shows that her withdrawal from her mother is simply a growing up and growing into adulthood. The only way that she feels that she can do that is by becoming secretive and breaking the bond she and Cam have shared for so long. This is, of course, not the only route to adulthood, but it is such a common one because the self-centeredness of teens makes them believe that their parent(s) will accept their self-sufficiency, personal choices, and change no other way. Again, Bird has captured this beautifully.

While the main narrative about the growing, yawning gap between Cam and Aubrey is very well done, the secondary characters are little more than shadows. Even Aubrey's boyfriend Tyler, whose revelations to Aubrey about his past are seminal to the story, is little more than a place holder. Cam's ex and Aubrey's father never quite develops beyond the wishy-washy picture-less Facebook writer, certainly not to the point that it is understandable why Cam still carries a torch for him all these years after his abandonment. But these characters are truly secondary to the main thrust of the novel, which Bird does get right.

A very readable, enjoyable novel about communication, misunderstanding, letting go, and growing up, this would be a perfect book for those taking a child off to school for the first time. A reminder that our children's lives are not our own and that they will forge their own path as adults, this is funny, heatbreaking, and poignant in equal measure. Sarah Bird has delivered a bittersweet page-turner that will leave you sympathizing with both Cam and Aubrey as they each face a new chapter in life.

The Gap Year is featured in Good Housekeeping's Summer Beach Reads 2011 and on Yahoo's 10 Best Books for Summer.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Gail Caldwell met fellow author Caroline Knapp through their mutual dog trainer and the two of them soon discovered that they were, in Anne of Green Gables parlance, kindred spirits. Their relationship wasn't just friendship, it defined the concept of best friend, that rare and precious ideal. This gorgeous and loving memoir is a tribute to that friendship and the terrible loss of it when Knapp, still so young, died of cancer.

Both Caldwell and Knapp were, as many writers are, solitary souls but each became for the other, a bright and safe light in the world of connection. They shared their hopes and dreams through the prism of everything they had in common--not just the writing but also their battles against alcoholism, their love of dogs, and their focus in life. Knapp taught Caldwell to scull and the two of them spent hours on the Charles River rowing together and going their own way. And this is perhaps an apt metaphor for their relationship. Each woman taught the other, they worked together, and they freely gave each other the space to go it alone, celebrating each others' individuality even as they pursued similar goals.

There are brief dips into both Caldwell and Knapp's pasts and the memoir isn't strictly chronological. It is more a free flowing meditation that captures something deeply precious and sadly ephemeral unconstrained by the mundane sense of time as a line. It is a record of Caldwell's heart laid bare for the reader, her gift to everyone who has missed out on knowing the amazing person who was her friend. It is grief-filled and poignantly accurate about the sucker punch that is loss. But ultimately it is a magnificent and beautifully written memoir that captures and records the friendship that is too special to let fade away with Knapp's death.

Gail Caldwell is the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was a staff writer and critic for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is also the author of A Strong West Wind, a memoir of her native Texas. Caldwell lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (from the Random House site)

This review is a part of TLC Book Tours but the copy of the book was purchased by me.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

This is a big book. It's not just long, it has very big, discussable ideas underpinning the text: environmental impact, Native Rights, the West as a place for reinvention, etc. It's a saga. It's also a big deal, generating a lot of buzz in the industry. And like so many other books in similar positions, it fell short for me.

I had a college geology professor who often said that he thought the word dam should always be a four letter word and it appears that this is eminently true here in this novel. Two competing storylines set 100 years apart but in the same Washington State town, this is the tale of the Elwha River Dam's construction and 100 years on, about the drive to tear it down. The characters in the present day narrative are mainly descendants of the historical characters but all of them seem fairly cliched. There's the Native American who has visions; the early feminist, strident and brash; her idealistic lover turned capitalist; the lesbian park ranger environmentalist type; the ex-con awol from his parole officer; the off-kilter, possibly crazy, Bigfoot sighter; the forge-ahead-at-all-costs adventurer; the ironically moral prostitute; and the list goes on. The characters sometimes cross paths and other times are only fellow inhabitants of the muddy little pioneer town that simply grows into a more modern version of itself after the advent of the dam. Flipping back and forth in time just as the reader becomes accustomed to one time period, the juxtaposition of the other time period is jarring and breaks the flow of the novel.

With an enormous cast of characters and more than enough plotlines to accomodate all of them, the novel was definitely ambitious. Unfortunately the two disparate narratives never came together satisfactorily for me. Ultimately I was just relieved to be finished. The overwhelming hype surrounding the book didn't help but mainly by the end, I was too battered by the effort needed to get through the book to care much about it or any of the issues it should have raised. Others have found this to be a huge and wonderfully enveloping epic. I did not but may it be that way for you if you crack it open.

Amazon says this about the book: The youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated St. Louis family of prominent journalists and politicians on one side, debutante balls and equestrian trophies on the other, Jeanne Darst grew up hearing stories of past grandeur. And as a young girl, the message she internalized was clear: while things might be a bit tight for us right now, it's only temporary. Soon her father would sell the Great American Novel and reclaim the family's former glory.

The family uproots and moves from St. Louis to New York. Jeanne's father writes one novel, and then another, which don't find publishers. This, combined with her mother's burgeoning alcoholism -- nightly booze- fueled weepathons reminiscing about her fancy childhood -- lead to financial disaster and divorce. And as Jeanne becomes an adult, she is horrified to discover that she is not only a drinker like her mother, but a writer like her father.

At first, and for years, she embraces both - living in an apartment with no bathroom, stealing food from her babysitting gigs, and raising rent money by riding the subway topless, or performing her one woman show in her living room. Until gradually, she realizes that this life has not been thrust on her in some handing-down-of-the-writing-mantle-way. She has chosen it; and until she can stop putting drinking and writing ahead of everything else, it's a questionable choice. She writes, "For a long time I was worried about becoming my father. Then I was worried about becoming my mother. Now I was worried about becoming myself."

Ultimately, Jeanne sets out to discover if a person can have the writing without the ruin, if it's possible to be both sober and creative, ambitious and happy, a professional author and a parent.

Filled with brilliantly flawed, idiosyncratic characters and punctuated by Darst's irreverent eye for absurdity, Fiction Ruined My Family is a lovingly told, wickedly funny portrait of an unconventional life.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

I do love words. My kids roll their eyes at me when I explain that I knew that Spanish word without ever taking Spanish because its English equivalent is a Spanish cognate. They are less than impressed when I tell them that the Russian and French words for store (I took both languages in high school eons ago) are also cognates. Obviously the English portion of the SAT will prove more challenging for them, mathematically inclined as they are, than it did for their word-nerd mom. For Pete's sake, I actually felt a sense of loss when the Oxford comma was phased out (and I will likely use them forever anyway). So a book about language, simple and complex, static and evolving, spoken by millions and spoken by only a few, was particularly suited to my interests.

McWhorter's primary argument is that language is changing and orally driven no matter the complexity of the grammar or the polyglot that created it. He offers examples of the ways in which language accretes new words, new grammatical structures, and how it evolves over long spans of time, branching (or merging) into discreet but related languages. He discusses the theory of adult learners causing extreme simplifications in languages in the time before language was written down.

McWhorter argues that language cannot be constrained by the prescriptives inherent in written language because writing as a development is too new but he is entirely comfortable insisting not only that language is fluid and ever changing but that new languages are currently developing in fact. An interesting inconsistency to be sure. I have to admit that I tend to lean a bit more toward a prescriptive view of language than he does as I see no problem in codifying language, articulating rules (as much as they can be articulated and despite my tendency to flout them willy-nilly), and accepting that the advent of writing is changing and lessening the fluidity of language just as people's movements changed language in the past before writing. It's a bit disingenuous to discount or dismiss the impact of the printing press because of its relative newness. I am, of course, coming at this not as a trained linguist but simply as someone who enjoys language, its evolution, its quirks, and yes, even (especially?) its rules.

McWhorter's viewpoint and mine are oftentimes at odds and I found myself shaking my head at his conclusions but I will say that his writing is very accessible, despite the sometimes highly specialized nature of the content. I loved his footnotes, breezy, casual, and witty. But his central metaphor about looking at language, like looking at underwater life from on shore, not noting things as they are and applauding the changes, is one that just doesn't hold up well. Underwater life may be changing but everywhere I've been diving or even just paddling about, the efforts are focused on conservation, not on allowing change to forge ahead unfettered to the detriment of the larger ecosystem. Despite our obviously differing viewpoints on language and the importance of abiding by the rules codified (and admittedly changed) since Gutenberg, McWhorter challenged me to think about why I feel the way I do about language and furthered my understanding of the unpredictable ways in which language drifts.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Coming home from an extended vacation always means there will be delightful surprises waiting for me. And opening these packages beats putting away clothes and doing laundry by a longshot! This past several week's mailbox arrivals:

The Winters in Bloom by Lisa Tucker came from Atria Books.
Like all of Tucker's book descriptions, this one of a much beloved husband and father disappearing from his backyard triggering his wife and son to examine the secrets they each hold and how those might hold the keys to his disappearance pulls me in easily.

How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre came from Harper thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours.
A memoir about opening up and learning to love through the lessons of her newly widowed grandmother, I am very excited about this one.

Little Black Dress by Susan McBride came from Harper thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours.
Looking so classic with a black dress and a strand of pearls on the cover, the hint of magic in a dress that offers two sisters a peek into the unavoidable future, this looks delicious.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan came from Algonquin.
A dystopian sort of Scarlet Letter, this one promises to be incredibly different and completely disturbing.

The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate came from Algonquin Paperbacks.
A family haunted by addiction, the successful daughter who thought she had escaped them, and an affinity with water make this very appealing to me.

Maman's Homesick Pie by Donia Bijan came from Algonquin.
A chef memoir with the added benefit of Persian recipes, this is just the kind of book I gravitate to every time.

Pretty by Jillian Lauren came from Plume.
A self-destructive woman who must battle her demons and find something to believe in to stay on the rails, this sounds like it will be incredibly intense.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Life in the Thumb as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Pages

About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.